


The scar

by Hotaru_Tomoe



Series: Bullets [24]
Category: Chernobyl (TV 2019)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Mention of homicide-suicide, Scars, Valoris
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:22:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25452340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hotaru_Tomoe/pseuds/Hotaru_Tomoe
Summary: Boris has a scar, Valery wants to know the story behind it.
Relationships: Valery Legasov/Boris Shcherbina
Series: Bullets [24]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1372144
Comments: 11
Kudos: 45





	1. Boris' scar

**Author's Note:**

> I noticed that Stellan has a scar on his left arm, and talking with Elenatria, Yankeetooter and Stellan-pip-69, I got the idea for this short fic.

Valery doesn't notice it right away, even if he often grabs Boris' bare arms in the throes of ecstasy to ground himself, but his mind clouded by pleasure has never noticed.

Only now, lying on top of him, still breathing heavily and stroking his left arm, he feels it.

There is a thickening on his skin, which runs along the entire biceps; intrigued, Valery lifts his head to look at it better in the dim light of the lampshade.

It’s a scar: the colour of the skin is almost uniform and you can feel it only by touching it, therefore it’s not recent, but it must have been a deep wound, if Boris still carries a trace of it on himself.

Valery raises his eyes on Boris’ face, the question that dances on the tip of his tongue but that hesitates to leave his mouth: their relationship and intimacy are still new, so maybe it's a too intrusive question?

However Boris looks at him calmly and caresses his sweaty hair, a hint of a smile on his thin lips: he understood.

"You can ask. Actually, I was wondering when my scientist would have noticed."

Valery smiles at the use of that endorsement: he loves when Boris calls him _"his"_ , to the point that he almost forgets what he wanted to ask him.

He touches the scar with his fingertips and then slides down on the large bed to rest his head on his belly, Boris' bristly hair tickling his cheek.

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to, if... if it's too painful a memory."

Boris shrugs slightly and continues to run his fingers through Valery’s fine hair.

"No, it's not that, it's just that you probably expect it to be something heroic and it's not like that."

"I don't expect anything," Valery reassures him.

“It happened here, ten... no, eleven years ago by now. I had just returned home when the couple who lived in the apartment next door started fighting. At first I didn't worry about it: they were having a difficult divorced and yelled at each other often, sometimes they slammed the doors or broke some dishes. I thought they would stop or that the man would go away for a while, as usually happened.  
But that time it didn’t go like that: suddenly the screams of the woman turned from anger to pure terror. I have never felt such a sudden change in a voice and I immediately understood that something serious had happened. Without thinking too much, I rushed out and knocked on their door, yelling to open."

Boris pauses briefly, but Valery doesn't interrupt him, rubbing his cheek on his belly.

"There was only one moment of silence, then the woman's screams resumed, even more terrible than before. I started kicking and pushing the door. It took a while, but in the end the door gave way, only that at that point the woman's screams had stopped."

Valery shivers, looking for Boris’ hand to squeeze it.

“I didn't know what to expect, as I said I didn't think much, I didn't think it could be dangerous. In any case, I didn’t have time to do anything, neither to attack, nor to defend myself: as soon as the door gave way, the man was on me and stabbed me on the arm; I had so much adrenaline in my veins that I didn't feel any pain, but I immediately saw the blood that started to flow, soaking the sleeve of the shirt, and I realized I was in trouble."

Valery touches the scar again, studying it with a clinical eye.

"It hit the artery," he whispers in a low voice.

"It grazed it, yes. I remember howling _Dmitrij_ \- his name was Dmitrij - _what the fuck are you doing?_   
My voice seemed to make him realize what he had done: he looked at me, at my wound, at the knife he was still holding in his hand, he dropped it to the floor and walked calmly to the window, opened it, and threw himself down. We are on the tenth floor, so you can imagine how it ended.  
And once again I couldn’t do anything, I didn’t understand in time that he wanted to throw himself, everything had happened in a matter of seconds and I was standing there, stupidly, with one hand pressed on my wound, beginning to feel dizzy for blood loss. Only when I took the tie off my neck to tighten it above the artery and stop the bleeding did I see the woman. She was lying on the floor with her throat ripped open, drowned in her own blood, but I didn't even try to check if she was alive, I dragged myself to my apartment and called the ambulance, trying not to pass out. Shortly afterwards, another neighbour came out of his apartment and helped me to stop the bleeding until the ambulance arrived."

Boris stops talking, but Valery urges him to continue.

"And…?"

“And nothing, that's all. I got away with a lot of stitches, instead the woman died before I could knock down the door, and the man was killed in the fall. What I did... what I tried to do..." Boris makes a vague gesture with his hand that is not holding Valery's, "it was completely inconsequential. As you can see, there is no happy ending in this story, there is not even a moral, it’s just a ugly, sad story. There are soldiers and firefighters who proudly wear their scars, because they got them by saving someone. Mine has no meaning, instead."

Valery rises, kisses him with dedication and insistence, and lies down on him.

“No, that's not true, you did your best. You could have stayed in your apartment, minding your business, as the other neighbours did, but you decided to do something."

"It didn't help."

Valery continues to touch his scar almost with religious reverence, "Do you want to know what I see in this scar?"

Boris nods: he is not afraid of her lover's judgment. In fact, he knows he might surprise him.

"It’s the symbol of your strength, your will to survive."

"You make it sound like it’s something great."

"It is," Valery insists, more resolute than ever, "Think of all the things you have done in these eleven years and that you couldn't have done if you hadn't survived, the things you can still do! Think... think about us."

Valery looks at him with his blue, bright eyes and Boris nods slowly: that’s true, if he too had bled to death on the floor, he would never have met his scientist.

“Your body has struggled with all its strength despite the loss of blood, has produced histamine and collagen to close the wound, and thanks to this scar you are alive, you are here with me. You ask me if it's a great thing? To me it’s everything. You... you know what you mean to me, don't you?" Valery asks, and for the first time a hint of hesitation slips into his voice. “Maybe it’s not enough to you, but…”

Boris chases away that hesitation with a kiss on his lips: "No, it is. You mean the same thing to me, Valera."

Valery smiles: "From now on, every time I look at your scar, I will think about this."

"Nobody has ever described it in these terms," Boris whispers, looking at his lover with boundless affection: for years he has tried to find meaning in what has happened to him, in vain. It took Valery to show him another point of view: he tried, he failed, but he survived, and met a wonderful man.

Boris gently caresses his face: "Valera... my scientist, my poet," he places a kiss on his forehead, "my man."


	2. Valery's scar

Boris has something in mind, Valery understands it by the mischievous glint in his eyes when he looks at him, and also by his smile, different from usual.

Once Valery saw some photos of sharks in a scientific journal, and every now and then it seems to him that Boris smiles the same way.

It’s vaguely disturbing, especially when he thinks that that smile is aimed at him.

But otherwise, Boris behaves as always: he is an uncompromising boss at work, and an affectionate lover behind the walls of his apartment.

Maybe it's just his imagination, Valery says to himself.

No, it's not, Valery finds out a few days later, while they’re in bed, naked.

Boris is in love with nudity as much as he is with Valery; at first the scientist found it bizarre to stay in bed naked all the time if they didn’t have sex, but he has learned to appreciate that custom, especially when Boris kisses his shoulder or caresses his back absentmindedly.

But now he is not absentminded, he is extremely focussed, as he kisses Valery’s neck just under his ear.

Valery closes his eyes and sighs blissfully, but then realizes that Boris' lips have stopped. He half-opens one eyelid and realizes that Boris is looking at him with that enigmatic smile.

"Do you want to tell me what’s wrong with you?" finally the professor blurts out, "You have been looking at me like this for days."

"Did you think you could keep it hidden from me?"

"I'm not hiding anything from you, you know I have no secrets for you."

"No? Not even a scar?"

"You know my scars, I showed them to you."

Valery has a burn on his right thigh, where he once spilled a corrosive liquid, and the appendicitis scar, an ugly cut badly stitched, because, really, the doctor who operated him was a butcher.

"No, my dear, not all of them."

That said, Boris uses his strength to turn Valery on his belly and hold him still by sitting on his legs, immobilizing him.

Oh... Boris talks about _that_ scar.

It's not that Valery consciously lied to him or omitted the information, it's that he constantly tries to forget that episode.

Furthermore, he really hoped that, given the unusual position, Boris wouldn’t notice it, and yet... and he says that the miners are perceptive. What about him, then? He really sees everything.

Boris caresses his left buttock, descending with his fingers almost to the junction with the thigh.

"I'm talking about this."

There is a horizontal scar, about a couple of centimeters long, that has intrigued Boris from the first moment he felt it under his fingers. Every now and then he observes it, when Valery sleeps, and waited for him to talk about it, but he never did.

Valery having a secret is an alluring concept.

"Well, I told you about mine, don't you want to do the same?"

"It's nothing, a trivial accident," Valery mutters with his face buried in the pillow, "a protruding nail on a bench."

Boris crouches between his legs, inspecting the mark with his thumb.

"Hmm... no, you don't fool me: if it had been a nail, the scar would be pointed, this looks like a small cut. In a truly unusual position, however..."

He squeezes Valery’s buttock to expose the injured skin to the light, and Valery sighs: "It seems to me that you are just looking for an excuse to grope my arse."

"I don't need an excuse," Boris objects, "but now I'm very, very curious about the story of your scar."

He is stubborn, tremendously stubborn, Valery knows it well: he would be able to keep him in that position all night long to make him speak (not that the idea displeases him, to be honest). Boris always reproaches Valery for making puppy eyes when he wants to get something, but Valery too is unable to say no to Boris.

"Promise me that you won't laugh... that you won't laugh too much," he corrects himself, thinking about the ridiculous story he's about to tell.

"Okay," Boris promises, continuing to stroke the little scar with his thumb, until Valery warns him: "You're not helping me put my thoughts in order."

Boris snorts a laugh and kisses him on the back.

"It happened a few years ago: I had lingered in the laboratory, without realizing what time it was, so I ended up being late for a dinner with colleagues."

"How strange, it never happens to you," Boris mutters, raising an eyebrow.

Valery turns his head and glares at him: "Go on with this cheap irony and I'll tell you nothing."

"Okay, continue."

"To get to the restaurant faster, I cut through the park behind the laboratory. Do you know the monument to the heroes of the revolution that is in the main path?"

"Yes, of course."

It’s a large bronze monument depicting four workers raising hammer and sickle towards the sky. At their feet are large laurel wreaths, also in bronze.

"I walked next the monument when I heard a meow, so I stopped."

Boris is about to say _"obviously"_ , because -really- Valery stops to pet all the cats he sees around, but he bites his tongue, for fear that his lover will really stop telling the story.

“I called the cat, but it didn't come up to me, then I heard the meow again and it seemed distressed someway. I also understood that it came from above, so I looked up and saw the cat: it had managed to climb to the top of the monument, perhaps chasing a bird, and it didn’t seem able to go down alone. I called him several times, I waved a blade of grass as if it were a toy, but nothing happened, the cat stayed up there, looking at me and meowing. I certainly couldn't leave it there, you know?"

Boris nods, but purses his lips to hold back a smile: he suspects he knows how Valery's story will end.

"There was nothing else I could do," the scientist continues, "I placed the briefcase on the ground, climbed over the cord around the monument and started to climb... I didn't even get to the waist of the first statue before I slipped and stuck my butt on a bronze laurel leaf."

Behind him, the bed begins to move, as if struck by a small earthquake: Boris is shaking with the effort not to burst out laughing. Valery can't even get angry, because what happened to him is really ridiculous.

"Oh wait, the best part is still to come: while I got up, aching, bleeding and with torn trousers, that arsehole of a cat climbed down by itself from the monument and walked away."

Boris can’t hold back any longer and bursts into a gargantuan laughter, rolling on his back: only Valery could have been so unlucky and clumsy.

Valery finally gets rid of his grip and slaps his thigh.

"Hey! You promised not to laugh! " he protests.

But then Boris' large and calloused hands are around his face and in his eyes there is no derision: Valery only sees love, so he lets himself be guided down meekly, when Boris drags him over himself; the politician tries to kiss him, but he is still laughing, and it’s such a cheerful sound that in the end even the scientist is infected.

After all, it's a really funny story.

"My Valera... you are truly unique."

Although he knows he is clumsy, he has nevertheless tried to help that ungrateful cat, and Boris finds it very sweet.

Valery shrugs: "Oh, sure: there are few men around clumsy like me."

"There could also be many, I don't care: I wouldn't change you for anyone else in the world."

Valery stretches his neck and kisses him.

  
  



End file.
